To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it’s sweet and sometimes it’s bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it all together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your life experience. There is something aggressive about this approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

…all of life is to be embraced, that all experience is here to teach us important lessons, even the most painful ones, and all human beings struggle with this at some point in their lives — it is part of being alive and connected to each other.

21. Still Writing, a review of Dani Shapiro’s new book on A Design So Vast. I just started reading Dani’s book Devotion this weekend, and can’t wait for her latest. In Still Writing, Dani shares this quote,

The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The actual teachings on emptiness imply an infinitely open space that allows for anything to appear, change, disappear, and reappear. The basic meaning of emptiness, in other words, is openness, or potential. At the basic level of our being, we are “empty” of definable characteristics.

When you’re tired, you don’t feel creative, hopeful, capable or blessed. You can’t touch the light or depths. Rest is the first step to flight. Our culture runs us ragged. Go against the grain. Don’t be so “productive.” Rest and let the sunshine break through the clouds in your soul.

36. A Note from the Universe, “Jill, you’ve done better than you know. You’ve helped more than you realize. And you’re closer than you think.”

37. Wisdom from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estès,

Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.

38. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Basic wakefulness, natural openness, is always available. This openness is not something that needs to be manufactured. When we pause, when we touch the energy of the moment, when we slow down and allow a gap, self-existing openness comes to us. It does not require a particular effort. It is available anytime. As Chögyam Trungpa once remarked, “Openness is like the wind. If you open your doors and windows, it is bound to come in.”

I just heard from a woman who was in my Chicago workshop. She greatly improved an essay she wrote by taking the risk to go deeper, then deeper still. She got to a truth she’d been hiding from, and it made all the difference. It was painful for her to write and to read aloud, but we all were stuck with the beauty of what she did, and even though we had not been through what she described, we resonated to her words. I think that’s because we’re all struggling with one thing or another here on planet Earth, and when we read about someone telling the truth about what they’re struggling with, it makes us all feel better. The Beatles were right when they said all you need is love. And I believe that part of love is telling the deepest truths about yourself, at least to yourself. It’s not easy. It’s something that for most of us is always a work in progress. But it’s worth it to try.

I get the image, sometimes, of all of humanity on a spaceship, in deepest darkness. But in the spaceship, the light is on, because of what we mean to and do for each other. And in that vast darkness, the light travels far.

8. Official video for Mary Lambert’s She Keeps Me Warm.

9. The perfectionism cure from Everyday Bright, “In this short video, I reveal the surprisingly simple method my daughter came up with to help us both overcome our perfectionism. I talk about how we eventually became comfortable with risk and, more importantly, with ourselves.”